1. Technical Field
The invention generally relates to the providing of content to a mobile device and more specifically to the providing of alternate content based on identified preferences to a mobile device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The availability and growth of use of handheld, portable, mobile devices, such as the personal digital assistant (PDA) and the cell phone, generally referred to herein as handheld devices, is revolutionizing the digital multimedia content viewing experience of individuals. Because each handheld device is specific to an individual, it is possible to personalize and focus advertisements, and other alternate content, to specific individual, or groups of individuals, having targeted characteristics. Ideally, the advertisement for each individual should be tailored, or otherwise targeted, to fit the specific requirements of that specific individual. Therefore, it would be necessary to provide each individual with a specific advertising stream.
One problem that exists today in implementing such a scheme is that there is limited bandwidth available in systems, such as a point-to-point or multicast wireless broadcasting of digital multimedia content. Therefore, it is impractical to provide each individual with a specifically targeted stream that fits that individual's characteristics. This limits the possibility to include focused advertisements and alternate content that are targeted towards specific individuals or groups. This is due to the fact that there are a substantial number of focused advertisements that must be broadcast simultaneously to achieve the objective of focused advertising. In addition, there must be the added capability at each handheld device to identify and view the alternate content or advertisement that is specifically meant for that individual. Hence, even though the idea of providing focused advertisements and alternate content to target groups has been a desirable concept in the advertising to customers using handheld devices, it has not been possible to implement this efficiently. Therefore, the current practice for inserting advertisements for viewing on handheld devices is to insert them into the content stream by splicing the advertisement either by altering the stream or prior to a multicast transmission.
Many mobile device applications would benefit if preferential alternate content scheduling capability were provided, thus enabling the insertion of forced or profile based content. In view of the limitations of the prior art, it would be advantageous to provide such a system that provides alternate content for an identified period of time. It would be further advantageous if such content is rendered by the mobile media player. In such applications, the alternate content is stored on the mobile device ahead of insertion time, along with time-synchronized metadata, and is scheduled for buffering and subsequent rendering.